


And Those Who Fear Are Lost

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Corporal Punishment, Post-Movie, Violence, an explosion of post-movie feels liek whoa, dribblet, excessively expressive wordage, i should have just written the damn essay, spoilers if you haven't seen it, written in entirely too short a time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:10:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "The Avengers," amends must be made -- and in the end, blood must first be given for blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Those Who Fear Are Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning -- I wrote this in maybe half an hour after agonising over it at work most of yesterday afternoon. It is the result of discussion about Loki's motives and long game in the movie, and the fact that he looked absolutely _wasted_ by his contact with the Chitaurii. What happened to him, through that looking-glass?
> 
> ...and now that he is back home, what is he supposed to do with the face he now sees staring back at him?
> 
> Basically, instead of writing an essay like a sensible fangirl, I made Thor do all the heavy lifting for me. Poor sod.
> 
>  **ETA:** ...and then I did write [the bloody essay](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/post/22382232653/deaths-dream-kingdom) anyway. ffs.

It is not their intention to humiliate. Though the very nature of the ceremony ensures that it can be nothing but for the one who stands at its centre, the true purpose is the restoration of a state of justice. In this case, it is performed to remind both the condemned and the gathered multitude alike that not even the royal house of Asgard may think itself above the laws that govern their own realm, and those beyond its golden halls.

To that end he has been brought before them in a robe as black as his hair; swirling whispers in his wake say it is as dark as his Jötunn-born soul. Yet he holds his head high as he walks between the guards even as his wrists and ankles drip silver-star-iron chains like a dogged trail of tears. But his eyes are dry, his eyes are green and watchful as he mounts the dais to face the one named to bring down justice upon him.

They do not require Thor to form the words of the decree, of the judgement, for which he is grateful. With Loki’s eyes upon him now he finds he is the one who can say nothing at all in his own defence.

Then Loki turns, wordless, to the flogging post. On his knees now, he has made a fall as graceful here as had been the one he had willingly taken before: into the void beyond the broken bridge that had once led to Heimdall’s observatory.

Thor waits. He knows his place, as Loki knows his. There is nothing more to say as his hands are bound anew, fixed and clasped above his bowed head as if raised in genuflection. Only then is the black stripped away to reveal the white Thor knows waits beneath.

A great gasp rises about him like a roused storm, though Thor is paradoxically left breathless. Loki is condemned, Loki is guilty, but Odin has neither disowned nor abjured him. Loki is a Prince of Asgard, and other hands have been laid upon him before this moment of justice.

With the loss of his shrouding robe it is unfolded to Thor’s view, this cartography of agony. His back is a map of his pain that might lead Thor to the very ends of his brother’s sanity should dare to follow the twisted paths and sinister roads that are charted before him.

Loki has been whipped, flogged, cut, burned, branded – his once pristine white skin is a cruel-wrought atlas of broken shore and boiled sea, all writ upon a canvas he had always so carefully and cautiously kept blank. In this Loki has changed once more from the brother Thor once knew. In this Loki has _suffered_.

And as Thor holds fresh suffering in an arc of cured leather above his head, he must pause.

….but…but then, Loki is cartographer himself. There are mortals almost beyond count dead by his hand – and still more lives have been torn in twain by the hands now bound to the post of ages upon the dais, before the court, before the entire realm. Thor looks to the brands across his skin and thinks: _have you not painted these lines yourself, brother, upon the skins and souls of innocents and the guilty alike? Have you not worked deep enough to leave scars both seen and unseen, both with deed and with word?_

His hand is still. They played together, fought together, loved together – from infanthood on they had always together and so rarely apart. Now Loki is as stone beneath him, once-familiar body etched with a thousand memories Thor did not share in the creation of, will never hold the knowledge of himself. This is a body he has known in love, now made stranger to him in the wake of hate and despair.

And Thor can feel every eye of the realm upon him as he looks upon the evidence of his brother’s fall and what had caught him on the other side of darkness. But it is only his father’s single watchful eye that matters.

_Only in the echoing cry of justice can the whisper of forgiveness be found._

His mother’s face is a pale curve against the golden shining halls, turned away in sorrow.

It could be a falsehood, perhaps. Loki is a shapeshifter. Loki can lie with his body as much as with his vaunted silver tongue. But he is silent, he is still, and even in the horror of that marred canvas of once-white Thor can still imagine what lies beneath. Hidden and masked though they might be now, they will always remain: the snake and curve of the indelible lines of his Jötunn heritage. They can never be removed, no matter what lies and lurks above them. Loki is Loki.

And neither can Thor remove the need for justice. For Thor is only and forever Thor, and he knows his duty as he hopes and prays that Loki will recall again his own.

“Forgive me, brother.” His hand tightens about the bone handle. “As Asgard will perhaps one day forgive you.”

Loki says nothing. His eyes are turned to the ground, and for that Thor feels deep gladness. Those eyes would say more than even his lips could, for they are lips Thor has seen twisted into a thousand grimaces of hate and fear, then quirked upwards in the assurance of love and amusement more times than he will ever remember. He sees none of that as he raises the whip. He sees only the most recent past scrawled across his brother’s back in a work of pain and hate and fear and the long sorrow of a fall that perhaps only now can be brought to an end.

And in the split second before the descent of his whip, Thor thanks the Norns for one simple truth: it is not Mjölnir in his hand. He could not have raised her to Loki again, not like this. Though she is a tool wrought in star-death both to build and to break, he thinks now she could only have destroyed everything had he called her to his palm now.

Still, he feels a spasm in the hand that knows her haft best as he brings down leather upon his brother’s exposed back.

Loki does not scream. His mouth is bound, and he can say nothing in his own defence. But, his eyes dry and his hand steady as he raises it again for the second strike, Thor thinks he hears it all the same.

In the distance: Mjölnir, gently weeping.


End file.
